Tony...The Last Of The Land Lords Equine

Tony the Terrible

I'm having a hard time with this particular blog posting...I want to finish it and move on to telling you all how wonderful my horses are and sharing all the funny things they do after their introductions...but first I have to get through this one single horse...

Guess I'll break it down this way...  I hate this horse. 
1.  He mounts my mares.
2.  He attacks any new horses with teeth bared and hooves flying.
3.  He will do the above act if the new horse is in the pasture or on the other side of the fence.  He will do it if its a mare, pony, mule, or gelding.
4.  He will do #2 if someone is mounted on said new horse.
5.  He will spin a screw if tied alone.  And I don't mean tied far away from everybody...I mean tied and no one is tied with him.  He can see the entire heard and will still go bat-shit crazy.  He will do this while tied in a trailer too.
6.  He will pee on a hay pile and move onto another where he will either eat or defecate.
7.  He will run you over in the field...not every time, but he has almost flattened me more than once, all for different reasons.
8.  He will attach the barn cat...now the dogs I understand, but the cat?
9.  He will sit back when tied.
10.  He will and does run through hot wire!  He just thrusts his head into the air and charges.  I have seen him to it 3 times in the year he has been here.

Tony, Horse Girl, Scarlett, and Fiona

Tony came to us with a different name, but the land lord had a horse way back when named Tony and it was a good horse, so this horse should have that name for luck.  I am pretty sure that its bad luck to change a horses name...and this horse's name was....ready for this....Gray when he got here.  Not that I loved that name either, but I will never duplicate an animal name...and if I get an animal with a duplicated name, I will change it...and when Fiona got here her name was something different, but I had a friend with that name and she was only 7 months old.  She has no idea who she was, but does know that her name is Fiona now.  I think that this horse was cursed from the beginning though...because the land lord's buddy changed his name from Granite to Gray.  He did this because he just didn't think a horse should be named after a rock....well alrighty then!!
This geldings past isn't entirely a mystery, although it did take me some time to get it out of everyone and then put it together for myself.  From what I got from land lord's buddy, he was a high school girls horse and when she left for college her parents traded said horse to land lord's buddy.  For what is a mystery, but I am sure that they got the better end of the trade!  Now land lord's buddy says this horse was trained in lower level dressage and did some small jumps with the girl.  He says they did alright on small local show circuit.  OK.  The land lord's buddy takes this horse for his trail horse and starts fitting him up to take to the Bob Marshall. 
After a month with this gelding the land lord's buddy tells me he is going to take this horse out and shoot him.  I say, "OK", and offered to show him where the grave yard is.  (The land lord believes in taking all of his large animals up a small draw and leaving them to the wild life.  I will DIE before I ever let anything above ground chew on one of my girls!!  But this is definately nothing the land lord has a problem with and we are rural enough that to the best of my knowledge its okie dokie as long as they died of natural causes or lead poisoning.  If the vet is involved using meds the animal MUST be disposed of in another fashion so as not to poison the wild life in the area.) 

Tony and Horse Girl

Well the next day the land lord is out and tells me how happy he is to have gotten something from old so and so (formally called land lord's buddy)!  I say oh, what'd ya get from him?  Packsaddle?  Whiskey?  He says no that gray gelding, isn't he a beauty?  I ask him if could trade so and so for the red gelding instead.  He says no trade, he just gave him to me.  LOVELY!  The land lord's friend is a horse/thing trader.  He loves the barter system and uses it daily.  So for him to just give it up...well...heres your sign.
This horse has issues and is only 12-14 years old.  He has chronic lameness in the front feet.  He is in pads and shoes and still need bute if ridden too often.  When ridden, he throws his head in an attempt to put your lights out.  He has knocked the land lord off of his back twice with this maneuver.  Against my better judgement I have ridden him twice.  The first time we rode, the land lord was in front of me on Mave and Tony wanted to race her at the trot.  I collected him and made him stick to my pace.  Wasn't long before I was looking at his fore head...he tried this twice before I decided to just handle it.  He dropped his head and then swung it upwards, and met my elbow between his eyes.  That was that, my pace, my rules, his pleasure!  ( :

Fiona, Tony, and Horse Girl

The long and short of it, I guess is free isn't always good....we all love a good deal....heck later on I will chat about my sister and I's free horse...and let me tell you, we did get a good deal!!  ( :

Oh, the one thing I do like about this horse is......

THAT HE IS NOT MINE!!